Glory & Gore Go Hand In Hand
by uccella
Summary: The original ZAFT boys, pre-GS. Vignette/one-shots that explore, in four individual chapters, remembrances of each of their first kills as soldiers.
1. Yzak

So this is what I've been working on in the midst of two other pieces (one drabble, one absurdly longer than I originally planned. It spans a mostly canon pre-GS timeline, with a few subtle references to my other ZAFT boys works. I recommend reading them in the order I've posted, as they refer to one another in some ways.

The original idea came from Lorde's _Glory and Gore, _which has always reminded me of these boys.

* * *

_Secretly you love this, do you even want to go free?_

_Let me in the ring_

_I'll show you what that big word means;_

* * *

His first kill is a messy one.

It shouldn't have been. It was a routine sweep: the _Vesalius_ had looped around the moon and the two of them had been dropped for recon, just outside of Copernicus City. _In and out, _the Commander had said. _Information is all we need. _

_Don't you have Greens to do that kind of thing? _Yzak had demanded, trying to keep the insolence from creeping into his tone and failing.

_Yes, _the Commander had answered. Then he'd smiled in that eerie way they were only just beginning to recognize. _But Reds are better at _that kind of thing_. Which is why you two will go. _

Dearka had shrugged, if only because Dearka was never phased by anything.

So they drop, two black Reconnaissance GINNs, on the outskirts of the city into what seems like nothing but the grey desert of the moon. They are not expecting hostiles – Yzak could do with a fight, he muses from his cockpit - but they cannot draw attention to themselves without risk of engaging. The scoping apparatuses of the GINNS scan the wasteland of the moon, ruby red cyclops eyes in the dark as they fly low before settling into their given coordinates. Their units perch over a massive lunar crater, nothing but long range rifles on their backs, scanners sweeping the area but coming up empty. Yzak leaves his on, the steady _beep _allowing him to count the minutes as they crawl by.

"This is bullshit," he says after a while, breaking their radio silence. "There's nothing here."

Dearka's voice crackles over the comm. "We've been here for all of five minutes."

"And I'm done already."

"This is our first solo mission. You could at least sound enthused."

Yzak makes sure Dearka can see his displeasure over the visual link. "Why not send Zala? Didn't he go to preparatory school in Copernicus, or something? He must know this dustbowl."

The blonde pilot chuckles, the sound muffled through the earpiece in Yzak's helmet. "Are you saying Zala would be better suited for this mission?"

"Shut your mouth, Elsman."

"Well, you did –"

"_Shut it."_

The sharpness in Yzak's voice is enough to silence Dearka, who realizes the other unit has become immobile. With sudden swiftness he drops his GINN below the crater's edge, swinging down to perch on the edge of the rock wall face.

_"__Get down."_

Dearka's unit follows, slipping down the dusty crater before deactivating its thrusters. "What is that?"

The feed is fuzzy – interference and dust, he figures – but Yzak can make it out clearly enough: an Earth Alliance Cosmograsper, skimming the cratered surface below lunar radar. The Commander had been right about recon, but wrong – and he was very seldom wrong - about hostiles.

"It's got a Striker Pack," Dearka says, his voice somewhere between excitement and apprehension.

"Good."

Yzak swings the viewfinder scope in front of his right eye, closing his left to focus on the blur of movement. He hitches the sniper rifle over the GINN's shoulder, aiming the nozzle of the weapon over the crater wall. He's never been good with target acquisition – it requires too much patience. He can never be that still. He likes wide swings and short stabs from close combat weapons, not perching motionless with a finger on a trigger.

He can hear the panic in Dearka's voice as it comes through. "What are you doing?"

"Engaging the hostile." He adjusts the placement of his fingers over the control board by inches and feels the GINN respond to the touch, repositioning the rifle. "What does it look like?"

"Like you're doing exactly what the Commander told us not to." Dearka's voice is forceful. "Yzak, there's no way you can make that shot."

_Athrun could,_ he hears himself think. Then he shakes his head in frustration. His left eye is squeezed shut so hard he feels the muscles in his forehead begin to ache.

"You are _not_ going to make that shot."

"I won't if you don't shut your fucking mouth!"

"Yzak, don't –"

He squeezes the trigger.

"Fuck!"

He knows he's missed even as the beam leaves the nozzle of his rifle, arcing through the air and whizzing past the Cosmograsper in the silence of the moon's vacuum. The other unit jerks, its thrusters reversing abruptly. Completing a sharp turn, it begins to loop back in their direction.

"Shit." Yzak sees Dearka's unit draw the rifle over its shoulder, but he knows his teammate won't make that shot either, especially not with the EA flyer engaging evasive manoeuvres. Before Dearka can make the shot, Yzak grabs him, his own unit dragging his teammate's down below the crater wall.

"Yzak!" Sometimes he hates the way Dearka calls his name.

For a moment, he considers not answering. He puts his GINN's hand on the other unit's mounted scope, shoving it further down. "You won't make that shot either, asshole."

"If we don't get out of here _we are going to die."_

"Like every other day."

He slings the rifle back into the GINN's recon pack and pushes the scoping arm out of the way, turning off the visual link and switching to cockpit view. The screen opens up in front of him, as though the metal walls were made of glass. He needs perfect visual vantage to pull this one off.

He detaches the massive steel knife from the lower leg of his GINN, the one he'd specially asked the tech to mount – nicely, then a little more forcefully – even though recons weren't supposed to carry close-range weapons. It didn't matter – he wasn't stepping into a single mobile suit without one. _But of course_ _you wouldn't have needed one if you didn't directly disobey orders to engage, _he hears the Commander's voice in his head. The calm way he reprimands them makes him wrinkle his nose in disgust.

He turns the back of his unit to the wall face, knife in one alloy hand.

"Turn your visuals on," he orders. "I need a two-and-half-second alert before it's over us."

If Dearka hesitates, it's only momentarily. "Eight seconds," he says.

Yzak grips the joint lock in his fist, and the GINN tightens its steel fingers around the combat knife.

_Don't hold it so tightly. _

Athrun's voice, in his head.

"Asshole," he murmurs out loud.

"Four seconds."

_Relax your fingers, and you can switch you grip quicker. _Athrun's fingers prying his open, then curling them back softly over the knife handle. A wry smile.

_Soften your grip, and maybe next time you can beat me. _

"_Now!"_

From a crouch he hits the thrusters and the GINN explodes upwards. He's early: the Cosmograsper has slowed down and so as he thrusts the knife upwards he looks up through the screen and sees the cockpit angled too far behind. Locking the GINN's wrist mechanics, he loosens massive alloy fingers, reversing his grip and dragging the weapon through the Cosmograsper's steel belly.

When his GINN lands, it's overtop of Dearka's, and the two bow away from the brilliant eruption of orange and white, debris falling in silence through the vacuum of the moon.

When the blast clears, there's a low chuckle in his ears. 

* * *

There's jeers and cheerful backslapping when they dismount on the _Vesalius – _an echo of congratulations, a job well done. Someone pats Yzak's silver head and he resists punching them, knowing there will be enough reprimands to deal with as it stands.

When the crowd of techs clears, he turns back to the black and gold GINN.

"So?" Dearka has sidled up next to him, helmet under one arm. His blonde hair sticks out unevenly, sweat matting it to the sides of his face.

"What was the first kill like?"

Yzak doesn't take his eyes off the GINN. Instead, he shrugs. "Fine."

"_Fine? _That doesn't even mean anything."

"Messy," he acquiesces. Then, "Was I supposed to feel something?" He's running through the gamut of emotions that seem appropriate considering the situation. Pride? Too vainglorious. Pity? Not fit for a soldier. Humility? Not fit for him.

Dearka shrugs. "It's probably a good thing. Not feeling anything, I mean."

He shifts uncomfortably, finally turning away from the GINN. Then he knuckles Dearka in the ribs. "I saved your life," he says, digging his fingers into his teammate's side, voice taunting. "You owe me."

"Because of your shit sharpshooting and a move that Athrun probably taught you?"

"You could at least be grateful."

Dearka swats his hand away. "Take a deep breath, princess." Then he grins. "Hey, did you call your mom and tell her?"

"Shut your cunt mouth, Elsman."

* * *

_end._


	2. Nicol

AN: Just like referring to PLANT as a singular collective rather than the PLANT(s) is a stylistic quirk of mine, I always believed the authors of SEED meant Nicol's last name to be Amalfi, like the Italian coast, so this is how I spell it here. Mostly because I speak Italian and spelling it Amarfi just seems so _wrong. _

* * *

_I don't ever think about death_

_It's alright if you do,_

_it's fine;_

* * *

His first kill is a single Earth Alliance assault unit. And eight civilian casualties.

The irony of it, he thinks later, is that it's a peacekeeping zone. The irony is that as the Earth Alliance's unit blows into the non-militarized perimeter with the intention of destroying the medical center - for the sake of a blue and pure world, no doubt - he shoots to both save and to kill.

A rogue machine, the Federation would later inform them. A third party defector acting on its own accord. And so there is nowhere to lay the blame, no accusation of guilt. There is no reprimand, no sanctions for him._Civilian casualties_ is the official military term. _Collateral damage_ is the word they all hear in their heads, the dehumanizing implication that lives lost in action are as inconsequential as buildings bombed out, fields and forests left scorched on the surface of the Earth. Accidental only because they are not _legitimate _military targets. Are those lives, he thinks, somehow different?

The GINN he was piloting had been the closest to the medi center. He had been the quickest to react, the quickest to reposition himself in defense of the non-combatant facilities. He waited for backup.

_No one is coming. _

_They're too far out._

_You need to take this shot, Amalfi. _

But he'd never been a good marksman: not like Athrun with moving targets, and he doesn't have the same judgement for blast radius like Dearka. So when he swung the scope over one eye and lifted the GINN's assault rifle, he was glad the steel giant's alloy hand did not shake the way his own did.

He fired two shots and missed.

_It's going to be too close - _

The third shot, almost errant when he fired it - blindly, forcing the panic down - hit the other unit square in the chest. It ripped open in a brilliant cloud of fire and debris, sweeping dust and churning the earth beneath it, and killing every non-combatant medical personnel riding in the convoy not far below.

Later, he'd said,_ If I hadn't hesitated, I could have taken it down without the convoy. _

_Yes, _the Commander had answered, even though it hadn't been framed as a question. _But to hesitate before a kill is only human. _

_But to hesitate in giving your life in place of another is not worthy of a Redcoat, _he'd said to himself. Outwardly, he'd said nothing.

_To save is almost always also to kill, Nicol. _

Appeasing them with philosophy had always been the Commander's strong suit.

And so the reason he enlisted, the consequence of his finger on the trigger is just as open to possibilities, just as unforeseen as his fingers when they hover over the keys of a piano, moments before he presses them into song. He cannot only pull the trigger to kill, but he cannot only pull it to save, either.

But now as he sits next to the glossy black expanse, fingers perched above the keys, nothing comes. Too many things are playing in his head, too many notes he thinks to begin only to lose the will to carry them through the moment his fingers brush ivory.

He is so lost in his reverie that he only notices Athrun is there when the other pilot slides onto the piano seat next to him.

"Well?"

The tone in his voice is neutral but inviting. Nicol could say anything, really, but instead he looks over the expanse of octaves and imagines the eight civilians who lives he didn't mean to take.

Athrun smoothes his own hands over the instrument, but without pressing them down into sound. He has too much respect for the piano's beauty to sully it, Nicol knows. Rare, to find someone like that. "I'd like to see you play."

This time, Nicol looks up. He knows his eyes are a little red-rimmed, his lips a little swollen from biting them, but it's just Athrun, so he lets it go.

"Me too," he answers quietly, then glances at his hands again. "But I don't seem to…" He trails off. "It's not there."

He can picture Athrun's brow furrow, see the creases in his friend's handsome face, even as he looks away.

"I think I left them on the battlefield," he laughs softly, a little helplessly. "The notes, I mean."

"You saved a hundred lives," Athrun answers, without missing a beat. "Maybe more."

"Maybe. But I also took nine." He feels petulant, answering Athrun like this. "They're still human lives. They had value."

"And they should be mourned," Athrun acknowledges. "But not if it interferes with what you know you need to do." He looks at the other pilot pointedly, green eyes pensive. "You were the one who came to sit with me every fourteenth of every February. You were the one who gave me space enough to mourn, but time enough to make me realize I had to keep going."

He recalls Athrun's ritualistic seclusion on the anniversary of Junius Seven. Hours in his room, spent alone, until Nicol would come find him, pull him out of his sorrow as though pulling someone out of the depths of a well.

"After all, death is only a door - isn't that what you said?"

Nicol smiles weakly. "I did, didn't I?"

"We could mourn today, but if we die tomorrow, what good will it have done us?"

Briefly, Nicol wonders if they'll have to go through this every time they take a civilian life, or if it gets easier, somehow. He can't imagine how it could.

"I shouldn't have hesitated," he says finally. He won't say _if I wouldn't have. _It's too late for _ifs, _and so he will acknowledge what he didn't do instead.

"You won't, next time."

There's a little bit of a shudder in his voice when he sighs. "I know the others think it's foolish. For me to have enlisted, to have made it so far up only to be so reluctant to kill, so hesitant."

Athrun fiddles with a _B _flat key, running his fingers along its contours. "Someone else might've been too eager to kill," he offers quietly. "And cost more lives. Our duty is to protect our people, each other, as much as it is to eliminate the enemy."

Nicol nods. He presses his fingers into a small progression in low _A _minor, the sound almost mournful. "And if my hesitation were to cost one of you your lives?" he asks, as the sound echoes in the hollow room.

When Athrun puts a hand on his shoulder, he feels as though the touch lifts him.

"It won't. I know you, Nicol."

_It's true, _he realizes at once, a sense of warmth and wonder in his chest.

"Don't become who you aren't, just for this war. Don't hesitate, but don't lose yourself to the killing, either."

They're strange words, coming from Athrun. Athrun, whom he's mourned with every Valentine over the photograph of his mother; whose listened with pensive eyes and brooding silence to his symphonies; whose made him feel as if he's worth something, miles from home in this red uniform - a peacekeeper amid killers. And yet they are perfectly suited to him, too: Athrun the reluctant leader. They will need him.

Nicol does not want to die in this war. But he realizes that if he must, he will die for Athrun. Without hesitation.

His fingers hover over the piano's keys. "Next time, I won't hesitate."

* * *

_end._


	3. Dearka

AN: While this chapter is Dearka's, I swear I have read somewhere canon that Yzak's thing (aside from being second best to Athrun at EVERYTHING) is defusing bombs, which is delightfully ironic, so I try to weave that into a fic anytime I can. Tada.

* * *

_Chance is the only game I play with, baby:_

_we let our battles choose us._

* * *

His first kill is not at all how he envisions it.

It's not in a mobile suit, for starters. It's in a dank underground facility on an abandoned colony in some nowhere corner of Lagrangian space. It's not a shot from a big gun, either. He's good with canons: the bigger the weapon, the better. He'd sit battle tactics and operate a Tannhauser if they'd let him; but he's a Red, so he makes due by piloting mobile suits with big, big guns. He totes around an M1500 _Orthos _high-energy, long-range beam cannon that he's nicknamed Otis.

So of course it's a surprise when his first kill - his first two kills, actually - are with a hand gun.

"I feel like it's already been established that the Le Creuset team is awful at reconnaissance." A shot _pings _off the wall a few inches from his face, flinging stone debris across his eyes. "So why are we here?"

He's speaking to no one, really. Athrun, Rusty and Nicol are somewhere above them in the maze of abandoned catwalks and underground tunnels. Behind him, a battery illuminates the gloom, and Yzak takes long, deep breaths through his nose. Dearka can see the sheen of sweat on his face in the lamplight.

A few more shots drill themselves into the wall in front of him. He returns fire before ducking back under cover, but he's firing blind: he can't see anything up in the darkness of the massive, circular chamber, and for all he knows he's firing up where their teammates have taken cover. The comms stopped working long before they reached this far down into the rock and metal of the colony.

"Oh, right - it's a Le Creuset special. Orders from high above. Tell no one. Send your youngest, most inexperienced, most unpredictable team of soldiers - excuse me, _pilots - _to do a recon mission in an abandoned colony that's actually full of Blue Cosmos insurgents."

"I can't concentrate if you don't shut your mouth, Elsman."

He looks over his shoulder. He can see part of Yzak's face behind the open porthole of the armoured container. The other pilot's eyes are fixed in intense concentration. Dearka thinks he may not actually be blinking.

"I bet you've had better time in Academy drills."

"Probably because I wasn't diffusing _a real nuke _in the Academy."

Another shot, this time from close by. He stands up to return fire, hears the clatter of a weapon hit the metal catwalk. It's a start.

He turns back to his teammate. "How much longer?"

Yzak wipes the sweat from around his eyes and exhales through his mouth. It's not a coincidence their team was chosen, Dearka knows. They were expecting insurgents. It was lucky the nuke was detected upon activation at all.

"A little more."

Dearka empties the mag from his handheld and slams a new one in, ramming the butt home. Sending Yzak made sense. The only time he wasn't threatening to fly off the hilt was while he defused an explosive. It was remarkable, really. Dearka figured Yzak could never calm down because he used all his calm to deactivate bombs.

Athrun made sense, too. His sharpshooting was impeccable. The mission, essentially, should've been Yzak working the nuke while Athrun held off the contingent of Blue Cosmos crazies.

Except the two would've torn each other's throats out before the mission began, he chuckles to himself. So they'd sent the cavalry in. And yet here he was, the worst marksman of the five of them, and the only thing between a successful mission and their collective death by nuclear detonation.

"Why did I enlist again?"

He crouches down to return fire and this time he can see the silhouette of a figure, assault rifle at the ready. He ducks as the wall above him is peppered, almost expecting not to make it, when the other soldier lets out a muffled groan and collapses in a heap.

_Athrun. _He looks up. The others must be up there, somewhere. No one else could make that shot.

"Yzak," he says calmly, summoning the nonchalance of his second nature. "I have one mag left. If you don't finish, or the others don't get down here by then, we are dead."

"I'm not dying in a place like this," Yzak mutters distractedly, as though on autopilot. Then he looks up, catching Deark's gaze. There's a hint of pleading there, if Dearka isn't imagining things. "I'm almost there."

Later, much later, he'll reflect on how lucky he was to have turned around at that moment.

Two insurgents on the left, coming fast. He swings around, fires off three shots. The first soldier goes down, the other toppling over him, down but not dead – he can hear them grunt and scramble to get back up.

"Time's up!"

He backs deeper into the alcove, a few feet from the nuclear weapon. He can hear Yzak slam tiny metal compartments shut, but slamming things is the silver-haired pilot's neutral reaction, so Dearka can't guess if something's gone wrong.

"Your left!"

The shrill cry is Yzak's, and as Dearka spins around he is thrown to the ground by a heavily armored figure. He feels a rifle dig into his side, knees crush the air out of his lungs and he thrashes until he can get the pistol snug against the insurgent's torso. _Lucky that I'm right-handed, _he thinks briefly, before he fires off a shot. Then another. The other man slumps heavily onto him. He feels his bones reverberate with the kickback of the pistol, pressed closed between them.

With a grunt he shoves the soldier off him, rolling the body onto its back. Blank eyes stare up at him and he recognizes the unmistakably empty gaze of death. Blood pools on the floor at his knees.

"Got him!" he yells, almost triumphantly. It's messy, but if it means saving his own skin, then it's a good first kill.

"_Ah –"_

He turns in time to catch the black shadow weave – _impossibly quick, _he thinks furiously – and come up behind Yzak. Thick, gloved hands grab onto his teammate's silver head, twisting. The glint of polished steel reflects off lamplight and white hair. Yzak brings his hands up to his face, trying to pry the gloved fingers away, and yelps in pain when the hands jerk his head back. The hooded figure leans over him, face lost in the blackness of the shadows.

Dearka sees the knife the dark – he could make it there in one lunge, perhaps, he's a good runner - but he also sees that this figure is strong enough to break his teammate's neck without it.

Slowly, he brings his right foot beneath him, the left still bent under him. The gun is in his right hand. Outside the alcove, he can hear bullets chime off the metal railings. Somewhere above them, Athrun is screaming orders. He thinks if he focuses enough, he can hear every word.

He's having one of those moments, he realizes - those moments soldiers talk about, on the brink of death or some impossible situation. Time slows down, suddenly, or perhaps he speeds up, but whatever's happening he's somehow aware of it all, as if from multiple perspectives at once. The movements around him are painfully slow and predictable and his senses are impossibly sharp: he feels every drop of sweat that falls from his face and hears every individual breath from the three of them, alone in the cramped gloom. It cannot be more than a split second, but it feels as if he has five minutes to consider all possibilities, during which he realizes he is not inclined to hear the sound of every bone breaking in his companion's neck.

He is the worst marksman out of all of them, but his raises his gun anyway and puts a bullet between the eyes of the man in the shadows.

The hooded figure crumples, and as he falls back Yzak falls forward, hands clawing at his throat. Dearka is beside him in an instant, lifting his silver head as he gasps for air. Beside them, the control panel of the nuclear weapon flashes a cheerful orange.

"Did you get it?"

Still unable to speak, Yzak raises a hand to the panel and flips the smallest, most nondescript switch Dearka can see. The flashing becomes a bright blue before Yzak slams the control panel shut, bringing his hand back to the earth as he keels over.

Dearka gets an arm under him and lift him slightly, peering over the edge of the nuke's armoured hull. The steady symphony of gunfire had subsided, and he can hear the shots from a long-range assault rifle fire at small intervals to the sound of grunts and moans, bullets burying themselves into flesh. Athrun picking off the stragglers, he figures. He kneels again, letting Yzak settle back down on the ground to wait until it's clear.

Dearka tries to stop the smirk that tugs at the corner of his lips, but he can't.

"So. I guess we're even now."

Yzak brings one hand to his throat, where the welts left by his assailant's fingertips burn bright red. With the other, he grabs onto the nape of Dearka's neck by the collar of his pilot's suit, and uses it to lift himself up a little more, face close to his teammate's. When he goes to open his mouth he can't speak yet, his breath still shallow, so he fixes his gaze on Dearka.

It could've been _shut your mouth, Elsman, _just as easily as it could have been _thank you, _Dearka chuckles to himself. For now, he thinks his teammate's breath in the silence is enough.

* * *

_end._


	4. Athrun

AN: Sorry for the shortness, Athrun fans ):

* * *

_Everyone a rager -_

_but secretly we're saviours;_

* * *

He says doesn't remember his first kill.

"What do you mean, you don't remember?"

He shrugs, one arm draped over the edge of the chaise longue, the other bent at the elbow, hand tucked under his chin. He tries to look nonchalant. It's hard.

Acoss from him, Yzak's voice is skeptical. "Everyone remembers their first kill."

"It's like a first kiss," Dearka interjects as he floats by, hands clasped behind his head. The lower part of his uniform billows around him in the anti-grav. "Or a first fuck."

"Except everyone knows who your first fuck was."

A snicker, and some eye rolling. Athrun wonders if the entirety of PLANT thinks he goes home to Siegel Clyne's daughter every night.

It's a lie, of course, that he doesn't remember his first kill. He doesn't _want _to remember, but he can't help it: a nondescript Skygrasper, in the heat of a skirmish on the far side of the moon, by the Ptolemaeus base. The kill hadn't been spectacular, and he hadn't saved anyone, or made an impossible shot, or done anything heroic at all. There was nothing special about the kill. He'd fired his assault rifle. The Skygrasper had exploded. That was it.

It was the mission that had landed them the intel for the Heliopolis raid. The mission that had thrown him into the fire and chaos at the Morgenroete facility, where he'd stood over Kira, knife in one hand.

_What kill would Kira have been? _he wonders absentmindedly. He's long lost count.

He watches Dearka reach the far wall, rolling over like a swimmer to push off and float back towards them. He drifts over the piano where Nicol is seated, quietly playing a few phrases, the notes echoing off the metal walls. Improvising, or maybe creating his own work. Athrun doesn't know, but he finds the low sound soothing.

It's been a while since Nicol has played, he realizes. A while since the four of them have been together so casually, off duty, without the stiffness of formality or the quiet undercurrent of death beneath every spoken word. A while since Rusty has died. A while since he watched them pack Miguel's things in a small, nondescript box. The only things that had been left of him.

_Not even a body to salute, _he thinks bitterly.

He recalls the emptiness of his shared quarters, the abrupt absence of another human being, before Nicol moved in the next day. _I couldn't take it, _the younger pilot had said quietly, amber eyes shadowed with doubt. _The silence of the room. His empty bed. Rusty was loud, you know?_

So they'd filled each other's void, gratefully.

"They say your father will personally decorate whomever takes out the Strike," Dearka says, conversationally.

"I bet the fuck was nicely decorated for taking out Miguel," Yzak hisses, blue eyes cold.

"Enough."

The three of them look up at him sharply. Nicol stops playing, the sound fading into nothing.

"Enough about death," he says again, this time quietly. Things are normal again, for the first time - as normative as they can be, on a destroyer in the middle of space, in the middle of war - and for once he needs to spend a few moments breathing in life instead of death.

Yzak presses his lips into a thin line. "You were the one who brought up everyone's first kill."

_Yes, _he thinks. _Because I came to realize that Miguel must have been Kira's first kill. _

The Commander's words echo in his ears. No killing without saving, and no saving without killing. He looks at the faces around him: silver, gold, and emerald. Behind them, Kira's warm expression, his gentle countenance the last time they met. He can kill Kira, save them. Or he can spare Kira, and risk the death of those who'd just as quickly die for him.

For now, he can do nothing.

He hears the other boy's voice in his head.

_Why are you with ZAFT?!_

It's a question he's asked himself since he's been putting bullets in the back of his enemies' heads and making fireworks of human lives in giant steel machines.

"Zala."

Yzak snaps his fingers, the sound jerking Athrun back into the present. The corners of the silver-haired pilot's mouth twitch upward. Next to him, Dearka floats by with a wry grin. Behind them Nicol seems to shrink below the piano as if to hide behind his instrument.

"Get it together. We're moving on."

He looks at them.

"Everyone's first fuck." Dearka is grinning. "You go first."

He sighs.

At least it's not about death.

* * *

_end._


End file.
